Prayer

Our weekly blogs, like this one, are read across the world by numerous NAMS companions, supporters, intercessors and friends. We are grateful for every one of you wherever you are reading this from. We pray that what we write and share would not only be an encouragement, but make a positive different to the quality of your walk as a disciple and follower of Jesus.

Please will you also continue to pray for us, that we would stay faithful to the work God has called us to as NAMS companions?

What exactly is that work, some may ask?

Our primary goal and work is to help plant and multiply disciple-making communities/churches through the intentional making of disciples and raising up of disciple-making leaders.

We believe that God raised NAMS up for such a time as this. We, along with faithful like-minded Christians, churches, organizations, networks and movements around the world, are calling and equipping Christians and churches to obey the final commandment that Jesus gave to his apostles and by extension, to all His Church everywhere through the ages (see Matthew 28:19-20).

We do this by being and making disciples that do the three things Jesus said his ‘made’ disciples would:

1) they will be missionary followers, whether to their neighbours or to the nations (i.e., they go where they are sent);

2) they will be plunged into the fullness of relationship and community with our Triune God and his people (i.e., they are baptized into the triune God), and

3) they will be taught to do all that Christ asks (i.e., they obey all of Jesus’ commands).

Believing this to be a serious call, we have banded together as NAMS – a working company of brothers and sisters around the world living under and accountable to a common rule and order – in order to work together for the spread God’s kingdom to all people.

But we cannot do this work alone.

By definition, the Church is the body of Christ, and so wholly dependent not only on Christ our head, but on each part of the body. For ‘we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.’ (Romans 12:5, ESV).

Therefore, we seek friends of NAMS who will pray with us and for us, and who will give to the work we are called by God to do.

If you would like to pray regularly for NAMS work in these and many other places, please write to our Global Prayer/Intercession Co-ordinator, Mary Garrison-Ruiz at mary.garrison@namsnetwork,com.

If you would like to learn how to be a friend of NAMS or would like to learn how to be a part of NAMS, write to info@namsnetwork.com.

If you would like to be a NAMS Global Apprentice, are young or young-at-heart and would like to spend a year or two in one of our NAMS base communities learning to be a disciple-making leader, go to www.namsgap.com.

If you would like to partner with NAMS in an active way locally, you can become a NAMS Centurion. Find out more at www.namscenturion.com.

Finally, if you would like to give a one-time or regular gift to NAMS, go to this page of our website to do it on-line (or, contact us if you are in the USA and wish to do a direct bank transfer or send in a cheque): http://www.namsnetwork.com/be-involved.html (click on ‘Donate now!’) at the bottom of the page.

May the words of Galatians 6:9 be an encouragement to us all today to continue the work God has begun in us: ‘Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.’

Finally, dear friends, after sharing with you about sweet Audrey and talking a bit about why prayer is so transformative—for the pray-er and the circumstance—we come to the call for intercession.

What a blessing it is to be able to communicate with our God and to know that at any moment we can share with Him the concerns of our own lives. Even so, intercessory prayer is different. It is praying specifically for the concerns of others, pleading on their behalf.

The truth is, sometimes I find it difficult to pray for others with genuine fervency; I imagine this may be the case for many of us not yet accustomed to doing so. Recently I read a passage by Richard Foster in The Celebration of Discipline which struck me. He writes, “Usually, the courage actually to go and pray for a person is a sign of sufficient faith. Frequently our lack is not faith but compassion.” Those lines convicted me deeply: often it’s my lack of compassion for others that limits my prayers.

Faced with my own limitations, I cry out: How can anyone ever be compassionate “enough?” Seriously, with the news and internet at my fingertips and constant connectedness with family, friends, and acquaintances via technology and social media, there is no shortage of prayer needs. How is one ever to respond to all of them genuinely, and to pray for our leaders and the poor and fatherless as Scripture directs us? I’m overwhelmed from the get-go.

But, dear believers, ours is not the role to respond to all needs; only God can do that. Rather, our responsibility is to respond to where God calls us by putting compassion on our hearts. Foster goes on to remind the Christian that as God gives us compassion, we are moved to pray; and that for which we are not stirred to genuine compassion, we trust that God is moving another believer’s heart in such a way. Yet, as we are faithful by responding in prayer where He prompts us, He is in the work of transforming our hearts to be more sensitive to the needs of those whom we do not yet have eyes to see.

Here at NAMS the Lord has put a specific call on our hearts: to engage in pioneering global ministry to share the Gospel and build up communities of disciple-making disciples. Every global need is in fact someone’s local need, but when a local community does not know the message of hope found in Jesus Christ, we must pray for God to raise up men and women from other parts of the globe to go share that life-changing, community-changing, and world-changing news.

Prayer is such a vital step in this process that we cannot do it alone. When Jesus sent out seventy disciples two-by-two into the mission field, he told them, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Luke 10:2). We need more laborers to be part of bringing in the harvest. These laborers indeed include missionaries in the field, but they also include an arsenal of prayer support from across the globe.

For this reason, NAMS is working to expand its intercessory prayer efforts worldwide. To achieve this, we will be sending out monthly prayer updates as well as resources and strategies to help prayer groups and communities grow in prayer and connectedness with other communities around the world. To sign up for this newsletter and be part of this team, you can write to mary.garrison@namsnetwork.com.

To those who do not yet feel a burden to pray for the nations, we ask God to give a genuine compassion for the lost peoples. Then, we simply start to pray, trusting in His faithfulness to respond to that prayer which delights His heart.

Last week I introduced you to my friend Audrey and her great reminder of the value of time spent with the Lord in intercessory prayer. But, deeper to the heart of the matter, why must we pray?

As faithful Christians, we seek to follow God’s will, and we know He is sovereign. Yet, in this so often we can be tempted to think: God’s plan will be done whether I pray for it or not. “I don’t really need to pray.” Or, perhaps we know “the churchy answer,” which is that, of course, we are supposed to pray, and so we will close our eyes and think good thoughts toward a person or some issue for a few minutes (or should I say seconds), and them we move on, patting ourselves on the back for sacrificing our time and energy to remember others.

Please don’t let my tone fool you; I write in incrimination of myself first and foremost. This is how I have thought and prayed for much of my life. The reality is that my prayer life modeled my spiritual life: immature on both accounts. But God can and will open our hearts and minds to grow and mature in these areas.

Does prayer “do anything”? I will write here unequivocally yes, but… Though there are countless testimonies of prayerful believers who can share their experiences of God’s answers to prayer, our faith to believe such accounts without our own personal experience is too often skeptical. Rather, let’s look back at the foundation of our beliefs in Scripture and build from there.

Prayer is communion with God, a time we share our hearts with him. (Remember Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his arrest.) But our sinful hearts are tricky and so often confusing; our desires and emotions change from one moment to the next. Yet the Holy Spirit is our constant companion, and in times of prayer, we quiet ourselves to listen to His divine direction. Indeed, Romans 8:26-27 states, “the Spirit also helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now [God] who searches the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because [the Spirit] makes intercession for [believers] according to the will of God.”

Intercession is pleading in favor of others, and in the first place, the Holy Spirit intercedes for believers to God the Father. It’s while we are under the Holy Spirit’s divine direction that the desires of our hearts slowly but surely become transformed to God’s own desires. So, indeed, the first point of transformation with prayer is that of the pray-er, but, the transformation does not stop there.

Over time, we begin to see God’s will for others in the Spirit-led promptings of our own hearts. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3:9 that we are “co-laborers” with God. All glory and power and sovereignty is His, but He gives us work to do—in prayer and response—to bring about His will. Is this because God could not do it himself? Of course not! But because He loves us, He invites us to be part of the process, because it is in the process of co-working with God that we see so clearly what He is capable of and learn to depend on him even more.

As the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, we can also intercede for others, trusting in the promise of John 15:7-8, which says, “If you remain in me and my works remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be disciples.” At NAMS we talk often about the marks of a disciple. Our conclusion is simply that a disciple is one who is dedicated to making other disciples. Praying and interceding on behalf of others is the work of a disciple-making disciple.

Prayer changes us and it can even change circumstances, according to God’s will. Next week I will talk more about how to intercede for others and how God is calling NAMS to grow through the establishment of an intercessory prayer teams. Might you grow with us in this process?